Unlocked dongle

We met up with a couple of friends, for lunch, recently. They had just returned from Spain after a six month stay. During lunch the conversation turned to mobile broadband...we said we intended to unlock one of our dongles and purchase a local data card, on our next trip.

They said "hard luck mate" from October or November only nationals with a residential address will be allowed to purchase data cards...........has anyone else heard of this one............is it back to the library, or wifi????????oh:

hi, when in Spain last Dec/Jan we read about a new law which said that all sims had to be registered by a certain date or they would be disabled. We bought a Carrefour sim to use in an unlocked phone without being asked for details but went back to register it later. I also bought a Vodafone sim and had to give UK address and passport number. They also said it could not be used for data but the procedure is to just put sufficient credit on and then text certain codes to a number to purchase various amounts of data.

explains the basic system but you do not need one of their expensive sims. It may be a bit out of date by now tho. The data prices have dropped a lot since and some extra credit was added to the sim by Vodafone both for electronically registering and as special deals at the time. You have to top up every 9 months or lose the credit and if you don't do that then the number is lost after 12 months.

The Spanish Vodafone website also explains but I don't think it has an English section for data.

Knee jerk reaction by the authorities if you ask me. All the terrorists will do is steal sims or mobiles. As usual the liberties of 'free' people are reduced even more.

I know, I know, in the scheme of things there are far more serious issues than not being able to buy sim cards in Spain but do we really want a world where everything has to be registered to everybody with the issue of personal privacy and the dangers that in itself creates where anybody with a criminal mind and the knowledge can steal private data?

Where will it stop? 2084 ..... introduction of registration law for shopping at the local Hyperstore before being eligible to purchase food?

It's bad enough with ID theft and credit/debit card fraud where databases are hacked and the data stolen.